Best 1141 quotes in «historical quotes» category

The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain.

The usage of the words "public" and "public sphere" betrays a multiplicity of concurrent meanings. Their origins go back to various historical phases and, when applied synchronically to the conditions of a bourgeois society that is industrially advanced and constituted as a social-welfare state, they fuse into a clouded amalgam. Yet the very conditions that make the inherited language seem inappropriate appear to require these words, however confused their employment.

The use of expressive colors is felt to be one of the basic elements of the modern mentality, an historical necessity, beyond choice.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

The visual possibility of seeing the historical person (as opposed to the eternal Qur'anic man) on screen is arguably the single most important event allowing Iranians access to modernity.

The Western planners are definitely trying to fragment the entire Middle East. They already have done, on several historical occasions.

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

The works of the creative spirit last, they are essentially imperishable, while the world-stirring historical activities of even the most eminent men are circumscribed by time.

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.

The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events.

They [Arabs] wanted to catch up with the modern world. The West appreciated that, but was more interested in colonies, markets, and spheres of influence. Such is the way in which historical forces operate: the give and take between nations, as between cultures, is no simple exchange

They [the critics] deal with Schoenberg's early works and all their wealth by classifying them, with the music-historical cliché, as late romantic post-Wagnerian. One might just as well dispose of Beethoven as a late-classicist post-Haydnerian.

Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.

This is an important point about symbols: they do not refer to historical events; they refer through historical events to spiritual or psychological principles and powers that are of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and that are everywhere.

This general tendency to eliminate, by means of unverifiable speculations, the limits of the categories nature presents to us is the inheritance of biology from The Origin of Species. To establish the continuity required by theory, historical arguments are invoked, even though historical evidence is lacking. Thus are engendered those fragile towers of hypothesis based on hypothesis, where fact and fiction intermingle in an inextricable confusion.

This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and unique... something truly historical, in the sense that history again demands to be heard.

Those old credulities, to Nature dear, Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock Of history?

This regionalization is in keeping with the Tri-Lateral Plan which calls for a gradual convergence of East and West, ultimately leading toward the goal of one world government. National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept.

This very individualistic form of Protestant Christianity that became so basic in English and then American life is to a large degree responsible for the historical success of Britain and America.

This much is true: you have been lied to.

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.

Thus, in setting an American agenda for a New World Order, we must begin with a profound alteration in traditional thought.

Though [Charles Guignebert] could not accept either the Christ myth theory, which held that no historical Jesus existed, or the Dutch Radical denial that Paul authored any of the epistles, Guignebert took both quite seriously.

Through its imperialist system Britain brought about untold suffering of millions of people. And this is an historical fact. To be able to admit this would increase the respect, you know, which we have for British institutions.

Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, he began at the moment that it broke out, believing that it would be a great war, and more memorable than any that had preceded it.

"Tiger is a natural kind" and "Tiger is a historical particular" are incompatible with each other, and evolutionary biology provides a reason for favoring the latter over the former.

Thus, our national circulating medium is now at the mercy of loan transactions of banks, which lend, not money, but promises to supply money they do not possess

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

To accept the story of the Arab destruction of the library of Alexandria, one must explain how it is that so dramatic an event was unmentioned and unnoticed not only in the rich historical literature of medieval Islam, but even in the literatures of the Coptic and other Christian churches, of the Byzantines, of the Jews, or anyone else who might have thought the destruction of a great library worthy of comment. That the story still survives, and is repeated, despite all these objections, is testimony to the enduring power of a myth.

Today, in American imperialism, the commodity has reached its most grandiose historical manifestation.

Together we have come to realize that for most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school.

Today's Politically Correct "historical Jesuses" are no different, being mere clones of the scholars who design them.

To me the Mahabharata is a profoundly religious book, largely allegorical, in a way meant to be a historical record.

To me, healing means you have to recognize there is a wound and you try to understand what the sources of the wound are, which means you try to tell a story about how it came to be. So you have to engage in some historical interpretation.

Tom, my husband, who converted to Judaism when we got married, and as a consequence, we were learning about historical conversions to Judaism. Really, every time it pops up, it's very strange.

Tomorrow, the Tripartite Pact will become an instrument of just peace between the peoples. Italians! Once more arise and be worthy of this historical hour! We shall win.

Too many historical writers are the votaries of cults, which, by definition are dedicated to whitewashing warts and hanging halos.

Too many American (and other) Christians revel in feelings and/or morality and don't care to develop a biblically-shaped Zeitgeist or worldview. The result is folk religion rather than classical, historical Christianity which has always included sound theology.

To write history is as important as to make history. It is an unchanging truth that if the writer does not remain true to the maker, then it takes on a quality that will confuse humanity.

To regard such a positive mental science [psychology] as rising above the sphere of history, and establishing the permanent and unchanging laws of human nature, is therefore possible only to a person who mistakes the transient conditions of a certain historical age for the permanent conditions of human life.

Tradition, in its essence, is something simultaneously meta-historical and dynamic: it is an overall ordering force in the service of principles that have the chrism of a superior legitimacy (we may even call them 'principles from above').

Trees have about them something beautiful and attractive even to the fancy, since they cannot change their places, are witnesses of all the changes that take place around them; and as some reach a great age, they become, as it were, historical monuments, and like ourselves they have a life, growing and passing away, --not being inanimate and unvarying like the fields and rivers. One sees them passing through various stages, and at last step by step approaching death, which makes them look still more like ourselves.

Truly, my dear young friends, you are a chosen generation. I hope you will never forget it. I hope you will never take it for granted. I hope there will grow in your hearts an overpowering sense of gratitude to God, who has made it possible for you to come upon the earth in this marvelous season of the world's history.

True counselors of despair are those who hope against hope—and historical experience—that the government can and will act constructively.

True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and through them, all the rest.

Truth is treason in the empire of lies.

Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.

Typically, historical black colleges and universities like Delaware State, attracted students who were raised in an environment where going to college wasn't the next natural step after high school.